Top 5 Alternative Uses for Envelopes

Aside from the carrier for your direct mail campaign or the outer protection for your ecommerce deliveries, the ‘humble envelope’ is in fact a rather versatile product.

For something a little different, we have a taken a quick look at some of the alternative ways you can use your plain or overprinted envelopes, to give them the longevity and adaptable purpose they deserve.

Envelope Budgeting

Envelope budgeting, as the name suggests is a method to support better management of your finances. The relatively simple process involves using envelopes to create categories/types of spend. The method allows you to use as may different envelopes as you need but, the idea is to allocate a set amount of money to each category to spend for the month, or a different allotted time. A great idea for keeping on top of those spare pennies, and with the addition of a nice bright Creative Colour envelope, a bit of excitement can be added to money management. What’s not to love?

Notebook addition

Pinterest has some fantastically creative ideas for what you can do with any spare envelopes you may have. We love the concept of adding a brightly coloured invitation envelope to the front page of your notebook. The envelope creates a perfect pocket for storing key notes, letters or any other important pieces of paper that you want to be able to access effortlessly. We may be giving this one a try ourselves, after all we have the perfect set of envelopes to do it with. We think a bright red Purely Everyday Invitation Envelope would be a lovely addition to any notebook.

Filing – office drawer

Filing, that dreaded word. Even the tidiest co-workers among us probably, sometimes, need a little help with filing. Here at Blake we make the most of our C4 gusset and standard C4 Creative Colour envelopes by maximising our drawer space with carefully categorised ‘envelope folders’. A bit like the concept of envelope budgeting this is a great way of visually splitting out your paperwork, making things that little bit easier to manage.

Canvas for your artwork

Blake have recently been supporting the charity From me to you letters, an inspiring organisation that encourages people to write to loved ones who are experiencing illness. We have provided the charity with envelopes to use for their tremendous work and recently we were delighted to see our some of our envelopes being used as canvases for beautiful artwork. Similarly to our Personalisation Service we feel that this personal touch shows just how versatile the envelope truly is. Plus, with a little bit of digital overprint print, foiling or even paint you can create something that instantly commands attention from the recipient: evoking emotion and that much desired excitement to find out what’s inside.

Craft materials

Our final alternative use may well be the most obvious but, it truly offers an array of opportunities that genuinely can go as far as your imagination will allow. Paper crafts have seen a huge resurgence over the past few years with paper sculptural artists such as Li Hongbo and Jodi Harvey Brown (and so many more) showing just how versatile a material paper truly is.

So, why not put those spare envelopes to good use and do something to really boost the power of the ‘humble mailing piece’?!

We would love to see what creative uses you have for your spare envelopes. Please tag us in any photos on our social channels and we will share the results.